Gloria Ann Taylor & Walter Whisenhunt's Orchestra Deep Inside You EP 180g Edition

Previously released as part of a double LP
compilation with her complete output on Selector
Sound and the Deep Inside You EP. However, this is
the first official reissue of the Deep Inside You EP as
it's on stand-alone release.
Soul singer Gloria Ann Taylor has no rags to riches
tale to tell. Her story is one of personal sacrifice,
failed relationships, and missed opportunity. She was
leading a hard knock life before being swept-up by
the flash and promise of a marriage and business
partnership with a successful record producer. She
would be nominated for a Grammy, rub shoulders
with James Brown and Bootsy Collins, and turn
heads from Motown. But in the end she rejected
professional singing, the music business, and the
lifestyle that came with it. Thankfully for music lovers,
before Gloria closed the doors on her singing career,
she left us with some amazing soul songs. Deeply
shaded by gospel roots, her haunting sound clearly
comes from the gut. Gloria did not fake the funk.
Gloria was a partial owner of the Selector Sounds
label, along with her husband/producer Walter
Whisenhunt (previously a right-hand man to James
Brown), and her brother Leonard. They released five
Gloria Taylor singles between 1971 and 1977. They
also released the three-song Deep Inside You EP,
under the name Gloria Ann Taylor and Walter
Whisenhunt’s Orchestra. In the studio Whisenhunt
would work up a unique musical brew that mixed
northern soul with exotic percussion and fuzzy
psychedelic guitars. He moved Gloria through a
range of tempos and stylings from ballads to disco.
Her gritty vocal performance was set to orchestral
arrangements creating a juxtaposition of grandeur
and solace. The pinnacle of their collaborations has
to be the jaw-droppingly epic EP version of “Love Is
a Hurting Thing”; a chugging, string-laden disco
track, that sounds like proto-Theo Parrish